PALESTINE CELEBRATES 4TH BIRTHDAY

There was no I Pad or smart phone back in 1952; only the current edition of My Weekly Reader, a slim newspaper passed out in second grade, geared to introduce us seven year olds to the gigantic world around us; a world of which we knew virtually nothing.

The title of the one such edition that May, 1952 day, intrigued me: "Israel celebrates 4th birthday". I was stunned. How could a country be three years younger than me? I assumed every country was a natural geographic entity that existed since the beginning of time. The article began to answer that question and fostered an endless interest in politics and history. I learned how countries are relatively recent human creations arising from numerous causes often including war and the endless struggle for survival, national identity and economic prosperity. They are constantly changing; sometimes growing through empire building and sometimes vanishing as the victim of that dreadful human drive.

Next week another chapter in this age old quest unfolds in the United Nations when Palestinian leaders make their case to the UN Security Council for statehood. Palestinians have been seeking statehood for decades but the don't have the power or the friends or the lobby often required to achieve the elusive goal of a homeland to call their own. Virtually the entire world supports the Palestinian cause, but alas, two of the most powerful, Israel and the United States, not only oppose it; they are working feverishly in concert to prevent it.

The irony should not be lost on any of us fair minded followers of this struggle, that both opponents were created out of the same yearning of a people to escape an oppressor and form a state of their own.

I'd like to imagine a day in September, 2015, when a seven year old, maybe not much unlike me, can click on his digital device and stare at the pixels which proclaim: "Palestine celebrates 4th birthday".

A DIME'S WORTH OF DIFFERENCE

What's the biggest difference between the criminal 911 attacks and the criminal Iraq war? The latter killed about 997 thousand more innocent souls.

The second biggest difference? 911 was planned and carried out by a loosely organized non-state sponsored criminal gang. The Iraq war was planned and carried out by an elected criminal gang of the most powerful nation in the world.

Number three difference? Most of the perpetrators of 911 have been brought to justice. The Iraq war perps? Well, they've all earning millions running around America hawking tell all war crime books.

Is this a great country or what?

COME BACK PAUL HARVEY

As a lifelong student of history, I enjoyed the late radio legend Paul Harvey's clever show "The rest of the story". It was always insightful and amusing how Harvey presented factual historical events on a variety of subjects with a surprise or "twist" saved until the end; something never before known or apparent. In his inimical voice Harvey ended each show with the tag line "And now you know… the REST of the story."

Sadly, we may never know the rest of the story how two airplanes managed to knock down three gigantic buildings on September 11, 2001. True, two buildings were hit, and large fires with temperatures far lower than could possibly have melted their support columns, ravaged their upper floors. But that doesn't explain the ten seconds of utter freefall as the concrete exploded into untold tons of dust and metal fragments were hurled hundreds of feet to embed themselves into nearby structures. Nor is there an explanation for how WTC Building 7, not hit by anything larger that some debris from the twin towers, magically fell in on itself about nine hours after the attack. And how did the BBC reporter have the psychic powers to announce the collapse of Building 7 about twenty minutes before it actually went "poof"?

We can't get the rest of the story from the NIST (US Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology) report which spent 3 years and 16 million dollars because it focused only on identifying "the sequence of events" that triggered the collapse, but omitted detailed analysis of the collapse mechanism itself (during which the collapse occurred). While there are plausible arguments that the three collapses could only have been caused by controlled demolitions, NIST simply concluded that there were no explosives or controlled demolition involved even though no tests were conducted to rule them out. When asked why NIST did not test for explosive residues, NIST spokesman Michael Newman simply stated that NIST saw "no evidence saying to go that way."

Ah, for Paul Harvey to leave his great radio studio in the sky and come back down for one more big scoop to startle and inform his avid fans of yesteryear who simply want to know, "the rest of the story."